吃饭吗?

As I understand it the question 吃饭吗? is a verbal gesture of cultural common sense. There is a disorder evidenced in the tension between the extenuating circumstances beyond one’s control manifest as a gesture of cultural common sense in the form of the question 吃饭吗?

A version of this cultural common sense of Chineseness romance manifests as melancholic moments and personal sentimentality. When there are many emotions in the space, when there are some moments words are not enough and necessary, 吃饭吗? is not a topic changer but a softener.

This work began within the sentimentality of the 吃饭吗? between two friend in their artistic collaboration. In Chris Kraus’essay “what is love beyond love”, she wrote this which was exactly what was happened, “if falling in love means an escape from yourself, an opening out onto new possibilities that until now, you hadn’t thought of, why should this flight be limited to romantic love or sexual infatuation? Some of the most powerful crushes are friend-crushes, and some of the most intimate, powerful connections arise through artistic collaboration.”. But I wasn’t know that time, too afraid to lose that person, I lost myself instead. This work has been a way to unpack and discover on some unhealed feelings. But when it comes to love, oh yeah, love is always in mix with lots of things. In love we lose ourselves. No one can escape by sheer luck even if we are trying really carefully – So was too afraid to lose you, lost myself instead. This, is a Cliché, but real in that my art hurts me back this time. My personal relationship had let me research on this idea of love while it was still fresh and ongoing. Our cultural common sense creates the chemistry impetuous to make the work. Chris Kraus wrote “Nostalgia is a product of diaspora”, that creates empathy, and I mistook the empathy as romantic love and physio analytic exploration, good for art.

But also this was my life.

I want to thank my friend for give me the permission of making this project. You have always inspired me as even today, and I know you are always there in some ways xx.



*Note: 吃饭吗?means Dinner? in English. 






*Video developed through Signal, music by A-Yǔ @a_yu_______



Dear ,

Here is my underline with on I Love Dick, while I standing on door step brought cherry.
“Schizophrenia consists of placing the word therefore between two non sequiturs”
“A search for proof. An orgy of coincidence”
“project himself into another person’s psychic situation”

…..
7/01, Friday

I followed up see if fridge is fixed, said no, they didn’t show up…I imagined depressed and lonely and more depressed than ever. So I brought cherries.

9/01
I read Chris’ wrote schizophrenia, I cried.
“Schizophrenics have a gift for lacking into other people’s minds.”
“Schizophrenics can instantly situate a person: their thoughts and their desires, their weaknesses and expectations.”
“The Schizophrenics…will suddenly burst out with the most incredible details of your private life, things that you would never imagine any details of your private life, things you would never imagine anyone could know and he will tell you in most abrupt way truths that you believed to be absolutely secret”
“Schizophrenics aren’t sunk into themselves. Associatively, they’ve hyperactive”
“The schizophrenics has lightning Freedom equals panic because without belief there is no language. When you lost yourself to empathy, a total shutdown is the only way back in.”


10/01/2022
I download the book - muttering from the sake of the stars
Cant find any, only selections of few pages
Random, first sentence “Sex and syntax: where the trouble goes first”
Um... philosophical sex, fuck each other’s brain.

I supports to go to the gallery first but I want to see you right away. It took me 15 mins drive.
I wanted pee so much, the all night I keeping drink water but still dehydrated.
I helped built Ikea tally
kiss me and go home
I hugged tightly, I was afraid it all too much i was dying, so I said “calm down, its ok, its ok, its ok”
Then, scratched my car again.

The words fail. If two philosophers having dinner and always end up flighting. If those two love each other, the flight got taken home into their bed, under the skin. Lovers like philosophers, talk, stop! Hug me, in bed, not standing, not sitting.

I driving in between the hills and freeway in the total darkness makes me feel light and isolated, as in a very satisfied, comfortable way. shhhhhhh there is no one screaming, magic tiggle kisses, two shadow casing on the fifth date night, walked three times. wrote a love note before i leave... i took it with me

26/08/2022
a lover’s discourse “to know that one does not write the other, to know that these thing i am going to write will never cause me to be loved by the one i love, to know that writing compensates for nothing, sublimates nothing, that it is precisely there where you are not - this is the begining of writing.” - dear , i am no longer writng to you


10/09/2022
“have a good smoke”

02/10/2022
“Kiss you to put me in the right place”

15/10/2022
Bad weather give us excuses
Stay in bed
Let’s go somewhere for breakfast
Dont go to work, its not safe for you to drive

25/10/2022
Four month with you, i start to pay attention when people speak of the unsporken truth of the motherhood

Even when you turn around your back
Hands stills searching for my feet


 





Lǐ Xīng Yǔ (Echo Li) 李星雨 (1997) @echothecutest is an artist based in Narrm (Melbourne) born in Suzhou, whose practice spans multiple disciplines: painting, performance, writing, photograph, video, printmaking etc. Her work often involves translation and remediation as methods. She is obsessed with love. The endless chasing of her overwhelming emotions is political and linked to love and cultural loss.  To be “Un” has been the key to her practices, which often embodies resistance and antagonism against the establishment and the dominant ideology in China. Similarly, the West is also plagued with political issues that often echo white privilege and colonialism. As a transnational Chinese artist, She lies in a mid-ground between two societies. Thus her practices often came from this sense of in-between-ness by being “Un”.  There are nostalgias, stories, humour coming from these places she lived; She carries them with her and sees them as the politics of identity as seen in exhibitions at Kings ARI, Das Boot Fair (with Yundi Wang) and Blak Dot, Melbourne.